UFAQ [Damon Stone]

The Runner has Safety First and Drug Dealer installed. What is the exact timing of the two draw effects, and how many times does Pālanā Foods gain 1?

Conditional abilities that trigger when the Runner’s turn ends do so at Runner 2.4, and abilities that trigger when the Corp’s turn begins do so at Corp 1.2. Pālanā Foods will gain a credit for both Safety First and for Drug Dealer, assuming each was the first time the Runner drew a card.

Palana Foods is the 5th "gain 1" identity. How does it match up to it's peers? More exactly how much money can you expect to gain when you put that power in the hands of your opponent? Let's run down the list by considering an average game with this double-barred ID:

The first thing we need to decide is when the Runner NEEDS to draw a card. After all, technically speaking you might never need to draw - but you'll probably flatline to the first Snare! or Fetal AI you see. A good benchmark is when they drop 2 two cards, or in other terms, take 3 net damage. How many times will that happen? Well it's tricky to evaluate, but with Snare!, Komainu, and Tsurugi available for Glacier-style decks and Project Junebug, Ronin and Psychic Field available for trap-style decks, I'd say it's reasonable to expect to get 1-4 credits from net damage alone. That's comparable to Jinteki's other money-making identity, the oft-forgotten Nisei Division: The Next Generation which often only triggers on Caprice Nisei. That's a nice appetizer.

But not many games can be won if the runner only plays with the 5 cards in their starting hand. At some point they have to draw to find the three breakers to get through all of your ice. If they run 2 copies of each breaker in the deck, like some popular Whizzard decks at the moment, then they need to draw 20 cards after their opening hand to get a 50% chance of seeing one of each of them. If they spend every on every turn drawing until they find all of them, they can expect it to take 20/4 = 5 turns without additional draw, which is 5 on top of whatever drawing they did to mitigate net damage. With 3x Restructure, 3x Hedge Fund and 3x Beanstalk Royalties, Weyland Consortium: Building a Better World can usually gain 6-9 from it's ID alone, putting Pālanā Foods: Sustainable Growth at least on par with the third best core-set corp ID. Well, it's a starter.

Of course, drawing 4 a turn is a pretty unrealistic model of how a runner plays, even when trying to minimize the effect of this identity. Most of the time, they'll draw a couple of times a turn and install a couple of cards or play events. That means it will take the runner twice as long to draw 3 breakers from their deck, which means we can usually expect to see Pālanā Foods: Sustainable Growth pick up at least 11-14. Given that's around the number of run events a typical Ken "Express" Tenma: Disappeared Clone deck runs, we'll probably make more money than the only "gain 1" Runner identity. But let's get onto the main course:

Haas-Bioroid: Engineering the Future is the gold standard for economy identities, typically making 15-20 credits over the course of the game. It's no exaggeration to say that Haas triggers every turn of the game, just for doing the things you have to do anyway. Can Pālanā Foods: Sustainable Growth meet this level? Well so far I've only been considering the runner drawing and playing cards - but not running! A good guideline is that most runners run once every turn on average, which means that by turn 10, they've used 10 running instead of drawing. That's another 2-3. But the real meat of the matter is that Runner's have to make money to do everything we've talked about already, which means they spend time making cash instead of drawing up, which means it takes longer to find the cards they need. If you spend one a turn gaining cash, running, and installing, then of course Palana's gonna trigger on almost every turn of the game. If the runner tries to play around that, then they'll fall foul of one of the other aspects: running into Snares, not finding their breakers until they hit a nasty Archer, not running enough or not having enough money to run. In short, if you don't draw every turn, you're gonna get your just desserts.

But when it comes down to how to split the bill, how do you spend all that money? Here are a few ideas:

Frosties: make money like an HB, play like an HB; spend that money on big fat ice. These kind of decks play a lot like Jinteki: Replicating Perfection, but your natural supply of drip economy let's you swap out the Sundews for Restructure to accelerate your game.

Apple Jacks: Of course, nothing's stopping you from playing Profiteering. Pālanā Foods: Sustainable Growth actually mitigates the problem of Account Siphon or Vamp really well: by the time they draw it, they've spent enough turns drawing that you've recuperated most of the credits you lost. A constant supply of credits let's you always threaten traps and advance traps further than normal, since the cost to tempo is made up during your opponent's turn.

Nesquik: gaining a credit most turns accelerates your game somewhat and let's you score when you should be building up money. Playing fast means they have to find their breakers, which means they need to draw more. So why not play a Jinteki variant of Supermodernism? Think like VinegaryMink's Bed Brew.

Honey Cheerios: You may have noticed I haven't mentioned the two other Palana Corporation cards introduced in this pack: Harvester and Pālanā Agroplex. They encourage a more "thousand cuts" style game, where killing the runner will probably only happen after they have no cards left in their stack. Levy AR Lab Access was the final nail in the coffin for that type of deck, but you may be able to make it work. Where is the "Honey", you ask? Sweeps Week! Getting that additional off of Pālanā Agroplex because they have 6 cards in hand is, well, sweet.

All I can say about this ID, and moreover this review, coming from Magic where Cephalid Breakfast, Cheerios, Pixy Stix and Eggs have all been deck names, this has made me smile.
—
FatalSource17 Mar 2016